Clax

DOSGames.com Review:  Rating: 2.5
No relation to the similarly named Klax, this game is formerly-lost part of gaming history. Alexey Pajitnov is well known as the creator of Tetris, but two other developers were involved with the game: Vadim Gerasimov and Dmitry Pavlovsky, both also employed with Pajitnov at the Computer Centre of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Recently a businessman named Giorgos Saradakis found a long-lost game from Tetris-collaborator Dmitry Pavlovsky on an old hard drive in Bulgaria. The game was spread widely by Anatoly Shashkin aka @dosnostalgic and there is an article about Pavlovsky and the game Clax here; we're thankful to all of these people for preserving this lost game. The game itself is not too remarkable, it's in text-mode and the goal is to squash the smilies by pushing the differing color tiles around on them. Pushing a tile with the opposite color of the smiley will destroy them. The controls are a bit tricky, you only swap the tile if you change direction on top of the tile before moving off it. (Difficult to describe but you'll get it after a couple tries.) There's also a timer counting down. Each progressing lever gets tougher. It's not the most compelling game but definitely a fascinating piece of gaming history.